A few months ago, Mitt Romney expressed outrage over the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. Yesterday, after the Pentagon said the U.S. would withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan next year -- ahead of schedule -- the former governor was incensed all over again.
Associated Press
"The president's mistakes, some of them are calculated based on a philosophy that's hard to understand. Some you just scratch your head and say, how can you be so misguided and so naive? Today, his Secretary of Defense unleashed such a policy. His Secretary of Defense said that on a date certain, the middle of 2013, we are going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan. He announced that. He announced that so the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it. Why in the world do you go to the people that you're fighting with and tell them the day that you're pulling out your troops?"
First, "the middle of 2013" is not "a date certain." Second, Romney failed to explain why a withdrawal target undermines U.S. policy in Afghanistan in any way. [Update: Jay Bookman added, "Romney himself has publicly endorsed a deadline of 2014 for the withdrawal of almost all NATO military forces, including Americans, from Afghanistan. To borrow his language, Romney announced that support 'so the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it.' So I’m not sure exactly what his argument is, other than to make meaningless noise on the campaign trail and try to pump himself up as a strong-willed military leader."]
And third, if Romney is going to pretend to have credibility on national security and foreign policy, he's going to have to do better than calls for indefinite wars. The guy's experience in international affairs is limited to Swiss bank accounts and stashing cash in the Caymans, and his efforts to overcome this deficiency in his resume aren't going over well.
Just recently, Romney has flip-flopped on Iraq and couldn't answer a question about an al Qaeda affiliate, Al Shabab, controlling significant territory in Somalia.
What's more, Romney's take on Iran is gibberish. His call for a trade war with China is nuts. He's under the false impression that there are "insurgents" in Iran.
Worse, Romney has struggled in this area for quite some time.
Remember the time Romney told ABC News he would "set a deadline for bringing the troops home" from Iraq -- but only if it's a secret deadline? How about the time Romney, more than four years into the war in Iraq, said it's "entirely possible" that Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction in Syria prior to the 2003 invasion? Or the time Romney pretended "Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood" were all the same thing? How about my personal favorite: the time Romney made the bizarre assertion that IAEA weapons inspectors were not allowed entry into Saddam Hussein's Iraq?
More recently, Romney tried to trash the New START nuclear treaty in an op-ed, prompting Fred Kaplan to respond, "In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and -- let's not mince words -- thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney's attack on the New START treaty."
He's even picked a fight over President Obama's strike on Osama bin Laden, ignoring the fact that Romney took an entirely passive attitude towards the al Qaeda leader, saying "it's not worth moving heaven and earth" to get the terrorist responsible for 9/11. Around the same time, Romney said he would not order a strike into Pakistan to get bin Laden, rejecting Obama's willingness "to enter an ally of ours" to target the terrorist leader.
Perhaps Romney should just avoid talking about national security, foreign policy, and international affairs altogether.
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But If Romney stops talking talking about national security, foreign policy, and international affairs altogether, and his economic plan continues to be as laughable as it is, and unemployment keeps getting incrementally better, and the results of the auto bailout continue to be positive, and the GOP continues to look bat-poop crazy, the only thing Mitt will have to run on is, to quote Blazing Saddles, "the Sheriff is a ni-!"
And we already HAVE a Newt Gingrich AND a Ron Paul to take care of that. Mitt will have to render himself redundant.
you mean things like this? things are getting better yes slowly but better and that's with out help from one side of the isle. think how much faster it could have been if congress (we know what that means) would have worked to help and not sabotage and obstruct things.
THU FEB 02, 2012 AT 07:30 AM PST
First-time claims for unemployment benefits fall to 367,000+*
byMeteor BladesFollow
Couldn't have said it better.
I just got an image of Romney, Ginrich, Paul, and Santorum having a bean eating contest.
Eeeewwwww! Yuk Yuk Yuk
Oh. And Santorum already went there with the bl... comment.
Oh Steve...Romney is for indefinite wars because that's the 'safety net' for the 'very poor'. He wants them to have JOBS not entitlements and this way they can go FIGHT for all the misguided policies of the GOP. It's a win-win.
Oh Steve...Romney is for indefinite wars because that's the 'safety net' for the 'very poor'. He wants them to have JOBS not entitlements and this way they can go FIGHT and die for all the misguided policies of the GOP. It's a win-win.
FIFY.
Dead poor people are no longer a drain on society. That's the perfect win for the neocon's who love infinite war.
Right. And when the poor are dead, then Mitt won't have to worry about fixing the safety net.
And if he doesn't have to worry about fixing the safety net, he can argue why the rich can have a few more tax cuts.
And of course the argument is a bald face lie (lower taxes to the wealthy means increased jobs for you!) to the middle class he so ardently cares about.
Which he will call to patriotic war duty as soon as the poor people are no longer available to fight.
Yes, but Mittchie Rich has a well-coiffed head for business...and that's all that matters, isn't it?
How to show a profit is all the foreign policy knowledge or awareness of how the proles live that Romney needs. Sheesh.
Romney is coming across as being as ignorant as Dubya was about foreign affairs before becoming president. In fact, Bush The Younger never owned a passport until Karl Rove insisted he go to Europe in 1998 as part of his ramping up to run for president. Mitt seems to be exactly the same although he did go to France on a Mormon mission once so he's not quite as bad as Bush. But Romney is clearly as ill-informed as was Bush.
and seems to care less than Bush did!!!!!
fourth
Defense said that on a date certain, the middle of 2013, we are going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan.
we are pulling our combat troops back, and the trainers are guess what combat troops.
More wars and indefinite wars is the foreign policy of the PNACers!
We obviously need another republican president so that Wolfowitz and his fellow Israeli citizens can get back into power positions in our government.
It is quite obvious that we really need Jeb Bush to run this year. He is one of the original signers of the PNAC Statement of Principles.
and that helps jobs !! How?
Endless wars mean jobs for banks and people in the defense industry. Without a war, they will have to get real jobs. Or maybe go on unemployment.
What's your point Pilot?
point being there will be combat troop in Afghanistan for a while. smaller numbers and more training roles. and before that the combat troops are pulling back from front line missions to support missions.
thats all i am saying.
thanks for asking
Has he yet justified that 12-hour-dog-on-car-roof thing by claiming it was OK, because it was all in reverse gear?
Greetings! Rachel
Mitt Romney is a joke, pathetic, and is very unelectable in the general election contrary to the popular opinion of some Republicans. President Obama is doing good in pulling American armed forces out of Afghanistan as agreed to by the majority of United States citizens and even agreed to by some Republicans. Therefore, Mitt Romney would be a fool and is a fool to adopt this endless and indefinite war stance which is a losing proposition.
Peace be unto you!
Marquest Burton
Maybe Romney won't know what it's like to really be at war until he sends one of his kids into the battlefield.
Mittens has already assured us of his sons showing of patriotism! As expressed by working to elect him president! Rest assured, Mitt's sons are engaging in the battlefield of U.S. presidential campaigning.
While the peon class may put their physical well-beings on the line in armed combat, Mitt's sons have endangered their psychological well-beings on the line! Even their share of the $100 Million trust fund may not be enough to overcome the danger they have been put into!
His father was governor of Michigan for 3 terms, from 1963 to 1969 and Sec of Housing and Urban Development from 1969 to 1973. His mother ran for US Senate in 1970.
My point? This is no Washington outsider, he's been entrenched in Washington politics all his life. Why such a poor showing? Just look at VP. Joe Biden's sons or Chelsea Clinton even. No way these offspring would be so off kilter.
He 's running for President and his five sons don't look like they know how to gather leaves!
You want to go head to head on national security with the President who got Osama Bin Laden?
Good luck with that.
Read Romney's 2008 concession speech, it is a horror of America-hating slanders and flat-out lies.
"Barack and Hillary have made their intentions clear regarding Iraq and the war on terror: They would retreat, declare defeat. And the consequence of that would be devastating. It would mean attacks on America, launched from safe havens that would make Afghanistan under the Taliban look like child's play. About this, I have no doubt."
We've seen what really happened- exactly the opposite.
As Mitt's wealthy funders go to work at it, that Osama is dead and GM is alive will be proof that Obama has failed! There is no truth that enough money thrown into this presidential campaign cannot overcome!
Just remember that when a republican politician talks about the government in DC being broken, they are not complaining; they are bragging about what they have accomplished!
Osama is dead
Not only Osama. Criticize drone attacks all you like, and justifiably so, but they ARE wiping out al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. Bush and the Republicans dropped the ball on national defense and Obama and Democrats are mopping up. Democrats are doing the job Republicans should have done in the first place, were it not for Bush "honor killing" 4,400 Americans.
Indeed. This guy is running for president yet has no campaign issues but smearing the president. Someone please tell me what he stands for, I do not have a clue. Everything he says is gibberish. Prove me wrong by repeating any insightful comment from Romney. Any at all. His comments are insightful the wrong way. exposing a mind consumed with arrogance and ignorance. Vote for me because I am rich! is his only honest campaign slogan.
Mitt Romney is running to cure the economic ills of this country as defined by the uber-rich:
- The wealthy do not have enough wealth
- We have too large and an unsustainable middle class
- The poor do not pay enough taxes
The mottos of the funding wing of the republican party are 1) More is never enough! and 2) I've got mine, f*ck you!
What is truly scary is not that Romney and all the other Republicans are pretending to be clueless idiots wrapped in flag and bible, it's all the American people who have let themselves be sold on the lies and gleefully vote against their own best interests. Unless you do have serious money- or time and a brain, you are "the sheeple", spending your time working hard, taking care of family, listening to friends, and catching a few hours of news a day at best. What they hear are sound bytes and FOX news, and Hannity and Limbaugh spewing venom on the radio at work. There is no hope for this country as things stand at this time.
It's a perversion of democracy and not by accident. Republicans show their means, motive, and opportunity. They lie for votes (means) to elected to office (opportunity) then rob the public treasury of trillions (motive). Democracy to them is nothing but a game, a dance, a show to put on before an audience while they grab cash.
Democrats are no better. They are unable to protect the public treasury from theft and are equally recipients of that stolen money. Democrats are security guards who are bribed to look the other way while Republicans loot the vault.
This will not change. Democrats will never stand up to Republican crime, and Republicans will never be patriots. That is why the country is doomed. We are headed straight for bankruptcy. Then what? Republicans uniformly dream of a fascist coup to put this liberal secular utopia out of its misery and restore the rightful place of the hereditary aristocracy. They'll try a coup in a few years, you can be sure of it. But it won't work, the people won't stand for it. Instead the country will break up. And that will be a good thing. American federal government today is nothing but a criminal class that lies for money. America as a nation is a menace to world peace and economic stability. Breaking the country up in at least three piece will restore the government to the people and reinvigorate the Constitution. The founders of this country never intended it to become the giant it has become. Dissolution of union is patriotic.
Can someone please tell me why Romney opposes withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan? OH, wait a second! Now I remember - the president supports it! This is just more of the same from Republicans - opposition for opposition's sake.
wait a second! Now I remember - the president supports it!
you also forgot We The People support it as well, and we have seen time after time that the republicans no not care what We The people have to say.
President Obama just keeps looking better and better all the time.
Mitt's beginning to remind me of W, except he's got a ways to go before most folks want to have a beer with him.
1) Half of this article is copy/pasted from one of the links given. At least credit it. ;-)
2)Unfortunately, you do not have to skilled or having knowledge of anything about how to govern in order to win. The GOP has made this point many times with many of the people they run for offices. All you have to do is be silver tongued and promise to beat that Marxist/Atheist/Muslim/Radical/Baby Eating Obama. That is basically the ONLY requirement to run as a Republican these days.
". . . if Romney is going to pretend to have credibility on national security and foreign policy, he's going to have to do better than calls for indefinite wars. The guy's experience in international affairs is limited to Swiss bank accounts and stashing cash in the Caymans, and his efforts to overcome this deficiency in his resume aren't going over well.
By Steve Benen
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Thu Feb 2, 2012 10:47 AM EST
Why should Mitt's foreign policies be any better than his domestic policies?
". . . if Romney is going to pretend to have credibility on national security and foreign policy, he's going to have to do better than calls for indefinite wars. The guy's experience in international affairs is limited to Swiss bank accounts and stashing cash in the Caymans, and his efforts to overcome this deficiency in his resume aren't going over well.
By Steve Benen
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Thu Feb 2, 2012 10:47 AM EST
Romney's Foreign Policy will be to let events run their course, then slap a coat of paint on it and sell it to investors.
Romney doesn't know how to solve problems, and his proposal for every one is to let it run its course and bottom out. The auto industry has made a tremendous comeback, and GMC is once again No. 1 world-wide. If Romney had his way, Detroit would be a ghost town instead of one of the lowest unemployment rates nation-wide.
Romney wants the housing crisis to bottom out. Then all the empty houses can be fixed up, sold to investors and rented out - to whom? All those people who used to own them? Have they survived being evicted? Do they have jobs that pay enough to make rent?
Romney said the same thing W said about going after Bin Laden: It's not worth our time and effort. (Read: we can't find him, and we don't know what else to do.)
There's a foreign policy for you! Just let things run their course and bottom out. Then we'll deal with the resulting mess.
"Romney's Foreign Policy will be to let events run their course, then slap a coat of paint on it and sell it to investors."
HEAR! HEAR!
Well this is actually good news. Everyone and their sister thinks it is stupid to stay in afghanastan. He just lost the vote of every soldier and their extended families. If you elect a Republican, you sign onto their approach to foreign affairs and spending unlimited amounts of money and life to police the world.
Not everyone! I believe it was stupid to get into Afganistan and criminal to stay there! As opposed to Iraq, which was criminal to get into!
Not to worry. Iran is next on our list of wars to please AIPAC and the Likud Party.
We keep judging the GOP candidates through the lens of our expectations.
The only requirement for the GOP electorate is "beat Obama". Foreign policy is not important to them unless it can be filtered through their one criteria. So Mitt Romney is doing just exactly what he has to do: every expressed thought must be related to contrasting himself with President Obama.
The other GOP candidates have some other meme... anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, make more money for me, create a pathway for my son,... Romney is the only one who is an exact fit. It isn't about what makes sense or what is important to the nation, it is what keeps twanging the anti-Obama GOP chord.
The one thing nobody ever ask him, yet is:
"Mr. Romney, you said you would 'take care' of Iran, continue the war in Afghanistan, wage a trade war with China, keep the Defense Budget growing AND not raise taxes. So how are you going to balance the budget? You ARE aware there is only one Planned Parenthood, right?"
Or I guess we can always hire Bain Capital to save the country's economy (as they handle the AA bankruptcy)....Let the country run its course and hit bottom, let it go bankrupt, that way we can waive the obligation for the pension and benefits (SS & Madicare/aid) to the people.
I guess that question only matter when there is a Democrat President in the house. Because when a Republican is in the house, war cost is called "National Security Measure", when a Democrat is in the house, it is called "Deficit and big government spending".
That's the plan. Top Republicans said so to justify blocking raising the debt ceiling last summer. We can just hand general tax revenues to the rich as interest on the treasury bonds they bought with their tax cut money. As far as Social Security, it's just a dependency-causing entitlement, you don't need the money, give it to the rich, every Republican says so.
In a few years when the economy recovers some more inflation will require the raising of interest on treasury bonds. Now the interest on the 15 trillion in debt is low. In a few years debt will be upwards of 20 trillion. Five percent interest on 20 trillion is a trillion a year handed to the rich and it will only get worse. The plan is to pay it with your FICA. Boehner said so, straight out. But the people are not so easily fooled. Fool them now with cheap talk but when push comes to shove it's Republican ass in a can.
What has always ticked me off more than anything else about Iraq and Afganistan was that when Clinton said Osama Bin Laden was responsible for "Blackhawk Down" the Republicans refused to believe it and demanded we get out of Somalia immediately because Clinton had no exit strategy and the news media let them run with it repeating it continuously, almost daily on every news show for MONTHS AND MONTHS.
But when Bush and Cheney and now ALL of the Republicans except Ron Paul have a chance they claim Iraq and Afganistan should go on FOREVER WITH NO EXIT STRATEGY. The News media of course NEVER brought/brings this up because they were complicit with the Republican party against Clinton concerning the "no exit strategy/not Osama" attacks back in 1993 and never questioned Bush/Cheney at all on Iraq/Afganistan and in fact helped them with their false facts to get us into those wars.
The absurd hypocrisy, and prevarication of the right and the propaganda of GOP TV (FOX, CNN, ABC etc.), GOP Radio (Clear Channel) and the dozens of GOP newspapers/mags (The Wall Street Journal, National Review, Washington Post, Time, The Weekly Standard etc.) is obvious.